Neon Icon
If Riff Raff didn\'t exist, pop culture would have to invent him. Gleefully tipping hip-hop\'s sacred cows, he\'s as much a meme as a musician and equally talented at being both. On his official debut, *Neon Icon*, he pours salt on everyone\'s game (even his own), chopping up styles like an Iron Chef. \"Introducing the Icon\" sounds like Run-DMC, while \"Kokayne\" is built around an electric guitar riff and a punk beat. There\'s slinking trap throughout, but \"Time\" is a curiously fluid slow jam. Much of the record scans as an inside joke: What\'s an \"Aquaberry Dolphin\"? Or a \"Versace Python\"? Through it all, Riff dares you to take him seriously: \"When I wake up, it\'s a mystery/Every time I open my mouth? History.\"
For the past three years, RiFF RAFF has become a cult phenomenon, and his proper debut, Neon Icon, is his movement’s anti-climactic culmination. It’s nearly impossible to criticize the album without coming across as an enemy of "fun," due in part to RiFF RAFF’s knowing, over-the-top branding as low-culture trash. But irony and irreverence can only do so much lifting on a record this thin.
The rapper-cum-font of free associating non sequiturs puts out a proper album on Diplo's label.
As of 2014, it was still unclear whether Texas rapper Riff Raff was a performance artist or a ketamine casualty freakshow supernova pimped by superstar DJ Diplo.
Self-actualised pop-culture avatar-cum-living meme finally attempts an album. By Paul McGee